Now the measures of the beak, the tibia, the thigh-bone, and the scull, compared with the most perfect of the embalmed birds taken from the mummy pits, do agree in every thing as exactly as can be expected. The length of the beak in my drawing seems to exceed that of the embalmed bird, but I will not be positive; this small error is not in the design, though the white feathers are scorched in the embalmed birds, yet there is no difficulty in perceiving the colour distinctly; there is less in distinguishing the black upon the wings and above its rump. The measure of both so exactly agree that they can scarcely be mistaken. The reason, we are told, why this bird was held in such veneration in Egypt, was the great enmity it had to serpents, and the use of freeing the country from them; but for my own part, I must confess, that as I know, for certain, there are no quantity of serpents in Egypt, as the reason of things is that they should be few, so I can never make myself believe they ever were in such abundance, as to need any particular agent to distinguish itself by destroying them. Egypt Proper, that is the cultivated and inhabited part of it, is overflowed for five months every year by the Nile, and it is impossible vipers can abound where there is such long and regular refrigerations. The viper casts his skin in May, and is immediately after in his renewed youth and fulness of vigour. All this time he would be doomed in Egypt to live under water, or hid in some hole, and this is the time when the Ibis is in Egypt, so that the end of his coming would be frustrated by the absence of his enemy. The vipers have their abode in the sandy desert of Libya, where even dew does not fall, where the sand is continually in motion, parched with hot winds, and glowing with the scorching rays of the sun. There the Ibis could not live ; the country is not inhabited by man, and consequently vipers there would be no nuisance. Nay, we know these vipers of Libya are an article of commerce in Egypt. The Theriac is composed of them at Venice and at Rome, and they are dispersed for the uses of medicine throughout the different parts of the world. Now, in this light, the Ibis could not live among them, nor would he be of benefit even if he could; but as we have it from a number of credible historians that the Ibis was plentiful in Egypt, that vipers, at least, in some part of it, were so frequent as to be a nuisance, and that we know as surely two other things, that neither the vipers are a nuisance, nor is the Ibis in Egypt at this day, we must look for some change in the œconomy of the country which can account for this.